Interference suppression by biased nonlinearities

It is shown that, when the input signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) is small, a biased nonlinearity that has a dead zone below some threshold value can provide a large enhancement in output SIR and signal-to-interference-plus-intermodulation ratio (SIIMR) if the threshold is set equal or close to the amplitude of the strong interference. In the absence of noise, the output SIR and SIIMIR are virtually independent of the input SIR, however low the latter may be. It Is shown that, for a dead-zone limiter, the output SIIMR in this case is -4.93 dB regardless of the input SIR. Under strong interference, any noise present in the input reduces the SIR and SIIMR improvement, but a biased nonlinearity can still provide an output SIR and SIIMR superior to the input SIR, i.e. an output SIIMR 6.35 dB below the input signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) instead of 6.02 dB below the input SIR as is the case with hard limiting